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					<h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Brief History</font>
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					<h3><a id="Anchor-Histor-42217" name="Anchor-Histor-42217"></a><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">History of Mahjong</font></h3>
					<p><font size="3" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Mahjong tile sets are used to play many variations of the original game. The version of Mahjong you play is the solitaire one. Each tile also has a meaning associated with it. </font></p>
					<p><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-GB" lang="EN-GB"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><i>'Mah jong'</i> can be translated from Chinese as 'clattering sparrow', 'flax sparrow' or possibly as 'hemp bird'. The tiles when shuffled make a melodious noise reminiscent of the noise of numerous sparrows squabbling over scattered food crumbs.</font></span></p>
					<p><font size="3" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Mahjong's origins are not fully known, but many theories have been put forth. One such theory says that Noah played Mahjong on the ark because the East hand is dominant, presumably the direction the rains came, in the flood. Another theory says that the Chinese philosopher, Confucius, made the game about 500 years B.C. The three Cardinal tiles have the same names as his three Cardinal virtues, Chung (middle) the Red, Fa (prosperity) the Green, and Po (white) the White, corresponding with Benevolence, Sincerity, and Filial Piety. A third myth claims it was created during the T&rsquo;ang Dynasty (618-907).&nbsp;Still another theory says that Mahjong is derived from other Chinese games. Ya Pei is played with 32 cards made of wood or ivory and have the same oblong shape as present day Mahjong tiles. Ma Tiae is played with 40 paper cards, similar in appearance, numbering 1 to 9 in four different suits along with the flower cards. It has been suggested that two brothers made the game, around 1850 A.D., from a combination of these two games. </font></p>
					<p><font size="3" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">In the early 1900's Mahjong was introduced into English clubs in Shanghai. Mr. Babcock started the importation of Mahjong tiles to the Western world. He stripped down the rules to the very basics and even put Arabic numerals on the tiles. 1923 was the height of the Mahjong craze with major gaming companies, like Parker Bros., Milton Bradley, and United States Playing Card, importing Mahjong tile sets by the thousands. </font></p>
					<p><font size="3" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Many different rules sprang up and in 1924 the Standardization Committee of the American Official Laws of Mah-Jong was formed to write a rule book. Still today many clubs play by different rules and sometimes even add flower or joker tiles. Players of the computer version are becoming intrigued with the beauty and detail of the hand crafted sets of the 1920's and 1930's and are searching antique shops and flea markets for sets of their own. Many new players are being introduced to the game solely through the solitaire version and are slowly realizing the intrigue and challenge that the traditional game offers.</font></p>
					<h3><a id="Anchor-Mahjon-14566" name="Anchor-Mahjon-14566"></a><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Mahjong on the Computer</font></h3>
					<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">The first computer solitaire mahjong game was created by Brodie Lockard in 1981 on the PLATO computer and named 'Mah-Jong'. The original layout was called 'The Turtle'.</font></p>
					<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">PLATO was a group of mainframe computers originally located at the University of Illinois, USA and was an educational system. Users connected to PLATO through terminals in the US and some from other countries.</font></p>
					<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Mah-Jong was freely available for everyone to use. In 1983 a new version was formally released by <i>Control Data Corporation</i> as an paid online game. But the original version was still available for free.&nbsp; It has long been thought that it was Activision's Shanghai from 1986 who was the first computer solitaire mahjong game. Regardless of the fact that it &quot;only&quot; was the second one, it was the game that made tile-matching solitaire mahjong famous. </font></p>
					<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><i>Shanghai</i> - the second computer tile-matching solitaire mahjong game was released by 'Activision' (California, USA) for the Macintosh in 1986. It was again created by Brodie Lockard (original idea, programming and artwork) and Brad Fregger (producer).</font></p>
					<font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><i>Shanghai</i> is one of the most successful computer games in history, selling more than ten millions copies world-wide. </font></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Shanghai has been ported to over 30 computer platforms.</font></font>
					<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><i>Shanghai</i> created a whole new genre. Over the years hundreds of imitators, clones and / or improved versions have been made. Since <i>Shanghai</i> is a registered trademark and the game originally used mahjong tiles, many tile-matching game authors have called and describe their games as Mahjong games. This has led to much confusion and debate over what is mahjong and what is not.&nbsp;</font></font></p>
					<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">The tile-matching games and the genre has no universally accepted name, but are now mostly known under the name of <i>Solitaire</i><b> </b><i>Mahjong</i> or <i>Mahjong Solitaire</i>. It's also been called <i>The Turtle</i>, <i>Shanghai Solitaire</i>, or simply <i>tile-matching games</i>. Widely known brand names include <i>Taipei</i>, <i>Kyodai</i>, <i>Shanghai</i>, and <i>Moraff's</i>.</font></font></p>
					<font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><i>Shanghai</i> might have been based on an old Chinese game called 'The Turtle'. The possible folk origin of the game has been much debated. </font></font>
					<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">The games belong to what you can call the 'meditative strategy genre'. They are extremely strategic in nature, but has no arcade or &quot;adrenaline producing&quot; quality. They gives you're concentration and pattern-recognition a good workout, but can be taken at your own pace since it is designed to relax the user, not to stress him. It's simple to learn and challenging to master. &quot;It's simple, it's universal, it's Zen&quot;.</font></font></p>
					<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">With some of the major games the user can often make their own tile sets, layouts, sounds and backgrounds to use in the games. Perhaps some of the genre's charm lies in this fact.</font></font></p>
					<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">There are now many versions with varying degree of sophistication for all possible platforms available, most of them of commercial nature. </font></font></p>
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					<h3><a id="Anchor-Stor-35986" name="Anchor-Stor-35986"></a><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Story of <i>this</i> Version</font></h3>
					<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">So why did I write another one when so many are around? First of all I dislike the many versions where the authors put more emphasis on decorative gimmicks while the things that matter are done rather sloppy. I wanted a flexible version that allowed to change the tile size and a version that runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac. To some extend I also was interested in how difficult it is to write a (simple) computer game; so far I only wrote scientific software. Last but not least, I started this project because my kids like the game so much and I wanted to write something for them. This version of Solitaire Mahjong is written in C++ using the non-commercial version of Qt. The tiles were created using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Creating the tiles was as much fun as was programming the game. The first version of it was written during the summer of 2005.</font></font></p>
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							<td bgcolor="#33328c"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><font color="white" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">What's new</font></font></td>
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							<td align="left" valign="top"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">1.0.2</font></td>
							<td align="left" valign="top"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">First release (September 2005) based on Qt 2</font></td>
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							<td align="left" valign="top"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">1.1.2</font></td>
							<td align="left" valign="top"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Added open/save feature allowing to store and replay games from file.<br>
									</font></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Allow to store solutions obtained with the Alt+= command. Based on Qt 3.2.</font></font></td>
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							<td align="left" valign="top"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">1.2.1</font></td>
							<td align="left" valign="top"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">First version with Qt 4.2. Minor changes such as new menu &quot;Tools&quot; to make the commands that were only accessible via key combinations better accessible.</font></td>
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					<font size="-2" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Based in large parts on the web site of Vegard Krog Petersen and the GNU Mahjong documentation.</font></td>
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